I was impressed with a number of points in this article because, as someone with a decent amount of readership who is in a relative position of authority, I get a lot of blowback. It's not something that surprises me, or even angers me at this point, because I was once one of these frustrated egoists. If I read an article about music that I disagreed with, I immediately wanted to tell my friends why the author didn't know anything. If there was a "top ten movies of the year" list in a magazine, I would scour the selections, secretly judging the critic's sense of taste by scoffing at what he or she thought "good" cinema was. But, of course, I was eighteen years old at the time. You'd hope most people would grow out of that phase as they got older—that desire to argue, point out mistakes, and be the real voice of authority—but many do not. The internet has only allowed that type of behavior to fester; especially since one can attack and remain anonymous while doing so.

Even though Eliot's article is about wine writing, you can easily replace the word "wine" with "whiskey" and the opinion would be just as accurate. I mean, this is just so utterly true about booze:

"there is a decidedly adversarial edge to so much wine writing these days. Somewhere along the line, an 'us versus them' mentality has insidiously worked its way into much of wine conversation, and generations seem to have been set against one and other."

There's an "adversarial edge" to alcohol appreciation, in my opinion, because we live in an age where no one wants to appear weak. No one wants to be the one asking a question. No one wants to be the guy who doesn't know about Bourbon. No one wants to admit that they're a novice—at anything! People want to talk, not listen. People want to tell, not be told. People want to educate, not be educated. Anyone who attempts to do otherwise will be called out or verbally abused. You think you know something? Well, you don't.

And, of course, wine appreciation is often seen as a very snooty thing. All that swirling, smelling, those ridiculous tasting notes, and the fancy food pairing. What a bunch of poseurs, right?

"David, I know what I like, and that's all I need to know!" someone emailed me randomly a while back.

That's great. For some people, knowing what they like is enough. But, as Eliot points out, knowing what you like and knowing about wine are two different things. Why serious wine or whiskey appreciation angers people is a multi-facted phenomenon. Some people get mad because they're insecure and they feel insignificant in the face of expertise. Other folks have a giant chip on their shoulder and are constantly looking to prove themselves. Whatever the reason, there is indeed a new tone in the modern era of alcohol appreciation and it's aggressively antagonistic.

My favorite line from Eliot was this one:

"I cannot feel but that the rush to 'demystify' wines and break down perceived snobbism has sadly tainted and unjustly devalued authentic expertise."

That's an interesting thought. When you taste wine and spirits every single day, year after year, you do indeed gain a certain level of insight. It would be sad if all that work didn't count for something.

"Music seems crazy, bands start up each and every day; I saw another one just the other day—a special new band."

—Stephen Malkmus, from the Pavement song "Cut Your Hair"

I do a lot of consulting for brands—most of it off-the-clock and unpaid—but I have a decent amount of insight into the hopes and ambitions of modern marketing. So many of these guys want to be the next Macallan, the next Jack Daniels, or the next Patron, but they don't understand that this level of status is a relic of the old world. No one can create a brand in this era that can captivate the attention of the entire globe. There are so many new brands, so many new distilleries, and so many new labels that it's impossible to keep up. With so much saturation and so little time to decipher what's what, consumers can no longer focus on just a few key products. However, it's exactly that missing focus that once allowed these iconic monarchs to become the king kong products they are today.

Don't understand what I mean? Let me give you an example:

There will never be another band as big as the Rolling Stones, or the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, or U2 while we are alive. Why? Because Ed Sullivan and MTV are dead. Those were outlets that had 100% of TV land's attention. Back then, if you wanted to watch music on television, we all had to suck from the same supple breast. Today, with YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, and ten million other outposts where music enthusiasts can discover new artists, there's no concentration of the world's attention. It was that concentration, however—that magnifying glass intensified by the sun—that created those legends, giants, myths, and long-standing heroes we now worship in their golden years. It's the reason why a front row ticket to The Who will cost you $5000 in today's market. It's fear that drives concert goers, just like it does whisky drinkers—this might be the last chance we have to see one of the great stalwarts of rock and roll. We need to do it one last time!! But do you think people are going to pay $5000 to see the Arcade Fire thirty years from now? No way.

Back in the day you only had a few liquor brands, so it was easy for successful labels to monopolize the attention of the marketplace. There wasn't anything near the selection we have today, forcing loyalties in a multitude of different directions. So Coors became Coors. Budweiser became Budweiser. Seagram's became Seagram's. And Johnnie Walker became the standard for high-end whisky. It's a prestige that has carried these brands into the new millennium, and it's a security that a number of our customers still hold tightly when searching for the best in spirits. Did any of you read that interview I did with my grandmother who was a bartender in the 1950s? "Back then we drank VO, nothing else," she told me once. "That was the extent of the demand." And this is from a woman who made her living by supplying booze. When you're dealing with decade upon decade of influence, legacy, and saturation of the marketplace, there's nothing you can do to counteract that level of dominance—it's like trying to undo years of bad habits. Old brands are as entrenched as the Republican and Democratic parties—so you can run as an independent, but in the end the best you can hope for is Vermont.

There are few monopolies on the world's collective attention these days, which is why people are still willing to pay $900 for Macallan 25, or $2000 for Paul McCartney tickets, or $4000 for a Chanel purse—because these things are experiences! They are the known quantities. They're nubs in our collective psyche. They are qualifiers for the value of what's important in life because they're desired by a greater proportion of the population, and desire is what determines value. There are only five first growth Bordeaux wines. There's only one DRC. Despite its terrible decline, Johnny Walker Blue still outsells anything we import directly. And Madonna will always trump Katy Perry.

There will never be another Rat Pack because there are too many young punks utterly trying—practically begging—to replace them. It's a desperation that turns people off. People strive for the mantel before they've accomplished anything worthy—like a craft distiller charging luxury prices—and it reeks of new money naiveté. And that's why society started to look elsewhere—to the "alternative" world of music, to the independent world of cinema, and to the microcosm of small distillers who we hope can provide us with that starpowered level of quality, without all that pomp.

However, in the end, we can't help but let these secrets loose into the general marketplace, because we ultimately need the acceptance of the general public to validate these experiences. There's the old line: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

To which I counter: If you drink a bottle of Pappy and no one's there to see it, is it worth drinking?

I was talking to one of my best whiskey customers about wine last night, and the fact that he does business with a number of other stores besides K&L.

"I'm starting to get annoyed with ________, however," he said to me. "I'm not going buy as much from them anymore."

"Why's that?" I asked.

"Because they've screwed me over on a number of purchases—certain pre-arrival wines never showed up, but I bought from them because they had better pricing than other guys. Things like that."

"Ahhhh.....I see."

This isn't uncommon in the Bordeaux futures business—to guarantee a hot price on forthcoming wines, but then not actually have the ability to obtain the product. Our pre-arrival process is what put K&L on the map in the wine world—we had good prices, good service, and our customers always got their bottles. We might not always have had the cheapest price, but we were competitive and you could depend on us. That's still the case today.

What's funny, though, is that we still get a number of people who call and want us to match pricing with some of these shadier operations. As one of my colleagues once put it: they want the Nordstrom service with the TJ Maxx prices. Unfortunately, you have to pay a little more for quality service—that's just the way it is. We can't afford to pay our knowledgeable staff and have the cheapest prices on everything. That's the trade off. We do our best to have both, however.

It's not just wine, though. I get people all the time who want me to match prices with the Whisky Exchange in the UK ("Uhhh....sir, you're looking at the price in pounds, not dollars"), or with some store in New Jersey that doesn't ship out of state and doesn't seem to have the product they're advertising (Sir, have you actually clicked on the link? They're out of stock.....and apparently out of business, too")

It's a crazy world out there; full with all different kinds of expectations.

I've never travelled to the fabled Tales of the Cocktail festival in New Orleans, so I decided to live vicariously through Camper English, who posted this article about last week's events. My favorite part is the line from the Barcardi guy who called booze the new music for eccentric enthusiasts. The quote is: "Now that there are no more record stores, (snobs) have moved on to coffee shops and cocktail bars." I about fell out of my chair laughing, having spent years working at Tower Records in the Castro (and being a big fan of High Fidelity).

It's not just booze, though. Eating, drinking, and travelling have long replaced music, film, and literature as the topic du jour of modern snobbery. People are now looking to brag about where they've been and what they've eaten, rather than what they know or understand. You know what's funny to me about travelling, though? The fact that there's a new American tourist caricature circulating around the world that has completely replaced the old stereotype we normally associate with National Lampoon's Griswold family. You know—the loud, fanny pack-wearing, doesn't-speak-the-language, and is-insensitive-to-local-customs type of person?

Modern Americans are so afraid of being cast as one of these clueless tourists that they've gone completely the other way, swinging far back to the other side of the spectrum. I see it all the time when David OG and I travel, but I was revisiting some old episodes of HBO's classic Mr. Show last night and I couldn't believe it when I saw that person here (it was like reading American Psycho and realizing it came out in the 1980s). Skip to the 1:00 mark if you don't feel like watching Bob's hilarious exchange with the donut girl.

Bob Odenkirk and David Cross did this sketch back in 1996, but I never really began to notice this behavior until I started working in the wine industry in 2007. You can see how ahead of their time these two were!

Today's stereotypical American tourist wants you to know that they are not one of those run-of-the-mill, touristy Americans who goes to all the obvious, touristy spots and wears a fanny pack and speaks loudly and doesn't even try to learn the local language. No, no, no. They are an educated American who is sensitive to culture, and who has studied abroad, and who doesn't go to the most obvious tourist locations when they travel. They've worked on a farm in rural France and even stayed with a local family in Cuernavaca, where they traded chores for language lessons.

It's the ultimate irony, isn't it? The attempt to escape what was once seen as typical, normal American behavior has become something quintessentially American! It's the new version of the American snob.

That’s right, folks! It is ON! "If there's a Whiskyfest and a Beerfest, then someone out there should damn sure host a Brandyfest" we told ourselves while discussing the potential of public tasting. For the past few years, both K&L and Bar Agricole have been travelling to the far corners of France with importer Charles Neal, selecting our own custom Cognac, Armagnac, and Calvados brandies from small farmers to the great delight of spirits aficionados everywhere. Until now, however, there has been no way to taste all of these spirits in one place. For one night only we'll be hosting two groups (the first from 5:30 to 7:30 PM, and the second from 8 to 10 PM) on the patio at Bar Agricole for a tasting of our Pellehaut, Baraillon, Laballe, Ognoas, and Thorin brandies, along with food and cocktails from the boys at BA. All in all, you'll get the opportunity to try more than 15 of our special K&L selections, and sample the exclusive wares of Bar Agricole in a number of delicious libations, all while snacking on delicious hors d'oeuvres.

Tickets are limited to 60 per group. They are $75 per person and that includes a pour of more than 15 selections, plus all you can drink cocktails and all you can eat snacks. Tickets are not refundable once you have placed your order, so please check your schedule before checking out!

Bar Agricole is at 355 11th Street in San Francisco. Tickets are listed by group below: